Auguste Rodin - c. 1875–1880
photographer unknown
This is part one of this article; the link to part two is below
Today is the birthday of Auguste Rodin, considered a founder of modern sculpture, who was born on November 12, 1840. From the unexpected naturalism of his first major figure – inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy – to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, his reputation grew, and Rodin became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Many of Rodin's sculptures were criticized as unfinished or fragmented because his work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
He was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion. Departing with centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an individual's character was revealed by his physical features.
His talent for surface modeling allowed him to let every part of the body speak for the whole. The male's passion in The Thinker is suggested by the grip of his toes on the rock, the rigidness of his back, and the differentiation of his hands. Speaking of The Thinker, Rodin illuminated his aesthetic: "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."
He was largely self-educated, and began to draw at age 10. Between ages 14 and 17, he attended the Petite École, a school specializing in art and mathematics where he studied drawing and painting. His drawing teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran believed in first developing the personality of his students so that they observed with their own eyes and drew from their recollections. It was at Lecoq's studio that he met Jules Dalou and Alphonse Legros.
Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was drawn to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Their work had a profound effect on his artistic direction. Rodin said, "It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture."
He kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. His student, Camille Claudel, became his associate, lover, and creative rival. Rodin's other students included Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, and Charles Despiau. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.
In 1904, Rodin was introduced to the Welsh artist, Gwen John, who modeled for him and became his lover. Although in her lifetime, John's work was overshadowed by that of her brother Augustus and her mentor and lover Rodin, awareness and esteem for her artistic contributions has grown considerably since her death.
In Brussels, After returning from Italy in 1875, Rodin created his first full-scale work, The Age of Bronze; modeled after a 22-year-old Belgian soldier, Auguste Neyt. Rodin chose Neyt because he sought a more natural pose than what professional models could provide.
His model for the The Thinker was French boxer/gymnast Jean Baud who performed in the red light district of Paris.
Jean Baud
Another one of his models was Stockton White III . . .
. . . White was discovered by bodybuilder, Eugen Sandow . . .
. . . White won one of Sandow's strongman competitions and was introduced to Rodin by Sandow.
From the 1890s onward, the art of dance was transformed, with new experiences revolutionizing what was sometimes an urbane and codified form of entertainment. Rodin’s keen interest in these innovations led him to meet such exceptional figures as Hanako (aka Hisa Ōta) and Loïe Fuller. A particular highlight was his encounter with the dancers of the Cambodian royal ballet during their visit to Paris to perform at the World’s Fair. When they left, in the sculptor’s words, they “took the beauty of the world with them.” Inspired by his complicity with the shapers of this revolution, Rodin associated dance and sculpture, both of which explore the possibilities of the human body. He turned his attention to all forms of dance: regional and oriental folk dances, cabaret performances, outstanding contemporary dancers, and dance as it was practiced in Antiquity – an interest he shared with Isadora Duncan.
He used assemblages to convey the body’s tensions, inventing audacious positions that combine e effects of void and solid, balance and imbalance. Rodin’s creativity focused on expressing the life force of the body, its vital energy, strength and equilibrium – just as dance explores the body’s relationship with space and weightlessness through extension, flexibility and freedom of line.
In 2022 a ballet titled, Rodin, was created by choreographer Julien Lestel with the music, Bolero by Maurice Ravel.
The popularity of Rodin's most famous sculptures tends to obscure his total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades. He painted in oils (especially in his thirties) and in watercolors. The Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings and prints, in chalk and charcoal, and thirteen vigorous drypoints. Portraiture was an important component of Rodin's oeuvre, helping him to win acceptance and financial independence. His first sculpture was a bust of his father in 1860, and he produced at least 56 portraits between 1877 and his death in 1917. He made busts of prominent contemporaries such as English politician George Wyndham (1905), Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1906), socialist (and former mistress of the Prince of Wales) Countess of Warwick (1908), Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1909), former Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and French statesman Georges Clemenceau.
Fifty-three years into their relationship, Rodin married Rose Beuret. They married on 29 January 1917, and Beuret died two weeks later, on 14 February. Rodin was ill that year; in January, he suffered weakness from influenza, and on 16 November his physician announced that "congestion of the lungs has caused great weakness. The patient's condition is grave." Rodin died the next day, aged 77, at his villa in Meudon, Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris.
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Hanako (aka Hisa Ōta)
